Now less than two weeks away from its season opener at Michigan, the Colorado State football team has moved from fall camp practices to a game-week workout schedule.
That includes Monday press conferences at Canvas Stadium, where first-year head coach Jay Norvell, along with fifth-year senior defensive lineman Devin Phillips and redshirt junior A’Jon Vivens addressed the media this week.
Norvell, who has had an eventful first August camp with the Rams that included missing some days with COVID, began by praising the efforts of the players over the last few weeks, but later pointed out that a head coach is never completely satisfied. There is always work to be done.
“I am very pleased with this training camp,” Norvell said. “This training camp really did more about our players, establishing our way of doing things, stressing the daily attention to detail, the focus that we ask as a staff.
“… We hit a lot in camp, more than I have in years past, a lot of live-scrimmage snaps. We tried to pour as many reps into this football team as we could. The players responded really well.”
Fall camp began Aug. 5 and the Rams had 14 practices, two of which were scrimmages. The team was split into two groups –1s and 3s together and 2s and 4s together. Beginning this week, the whole team will practice together.
With the season opener so close, Norvell, his staff and the team are beginning to focus on the opener Sept. 3 in Ann Arbor.
“We are starting to transition to the Michigan prep this week some,” Norvell said. “That is typically how we have always done it. We like to transition the players to an in-week schedule and get them used to that, and then repeat that into game week. We start on Michigan this week.”
The players are ready to move into game-week mode as well after two weeks of morning practices.
With two scrimmages behind them and one more opportunity for live action Saturday with a mock game, the team knows there is still work to do, but the players can begin to feel the build-up to the team’s first game.
“Camp is always a grind, getting a lot of work in, doing that every day,” Vivens said. “Itap a bit of relief, but you need camp to transition into the season. Everybody is locked in and ready to go and get ready for Michigan.”
Phillips, who has started 36 games over four seasons for the Rams and will play a season opener under his third different head coach, said practicing for an opponent is a nice change.
“Once camp ends, it is a sigh of relief,” Phillips said. “You are still practicing with a purpose, but now you have an opponent, learning their schemes, finding different things that they do, watching a lot of film, and putting a lot of time into that.”
Norvell, who began installing his system during spring workouts months ago along with his staff, some of whom have been with him at other schools, is pleased with how far along the team is at this point, but said it is hard to be completely satisfied.
There was retention from the spring to when fall camp began and the team showed improvement from its first scrimmage to its second.
“When you take a program over, you are never really happy,” Norvell said. “You are never satisfied with where you are, but you try to push the team as far as it can go. We really try to force-feed them situations. We are giving them experiences that they can learn from. … We have probably poured as many situations into this team as we have with any team. At this point, they have really experienced quite a bit. They are much further ahead than other teams that we have had.
“From where we were in the spring to this point, we have had very little issues injury-wise and a lot of contact. This team is run well. We poured a lot of repetitions in them, so we are stretching their game shape and trying to get them ready for the opener.”
Saturday’s mock game will focus on pre-game preparation as much as more live reps for the team. Those things are just as important, Norvell said.
Once it is over, preparation for Michigan will kick into high gear as the team enters its first official game week of the season.
“You never really hit everything,” Norvell said. “But in our game-week schedule, we’ll hit certain end-of-game situations and routine situations that we will cover every week. We will do those in the mock game as well. We will practice our warmup and our game-day loosening up session. We are going to kick off right at game time that is going to happen at Michigan.”
